Jamie Sarkonak: N.L. policy blocking parents from children’s health records was an avoidable mistake

Premier Tony Wakeham. Photo by Keith Gosse/The Telegram

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Earlier this month, Newfoundland parents were told by provincial authorities that they wouldn’t be entitled to view the health information of their kids, if aged 12 or over, on a new government portal. Tweens and teens would have to consent to allow parents access to health files, which would inevitably undermine the care of stubborn, angry, difficult, behaviourally-issue-ridden youth.

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What was perhaps most surprising was this happened under a Progressive Conservative government — which, at least, walked the idea back some days later. The PCs blamed the awkward policy choice on past practice, which checks out. But from this, conservatives everywhere should draw a lesson: don’t blindly accept the status quo that’s been handed to you by your predecessors.

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Premier Tony Wakeham stated Thursday that “current laws and policies have been in existence for decades.” The new digital health platform merely exposed that there was a “fundamental misalignment” between parental expectations and the old way of doing things.

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He’s right that this has been around for a while. The Telegram traced back the rule to at least 2021, when a now-archived webpage stated that record requests for children between 12 and 15 years of age required signatures of parent and child; for those 16 and older, disclosure to a parent required the consent of the youth. This was when the provincial Liberals were in power, by the way.

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As far as the actual law goes, Newfoundland’s privacy statute is largely silent on children. It does say, however, that parents may stand in for children for information-access purposes when the government custodian of that information believes “the minor does not understand the nature of the right or power and the consequences of exercising the right or power.”

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It’s usually presumed in Canadian law that parents are the primary decision-makers of children, with some exceptions for “mature minors” in the health context.

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Alas, Newfoundland takes an extreme approach: it appears that the health system considers all 12-year-olds to have a deep understanding of the consequences of denying their mom or dad the ability to see into their health file.

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A memo N.L. Health Services sent to parents of school-aged children in Newfoundland and Labrador, outlining the policy for accessing children’s medical records through the MyHealthNL online tool. (NL Health Services) Photo by NL Health Services

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It just so happens that the Newfoundland approach to kids’ health information aligns with the no-parents-allowed policies that transgender activists have rallied so hard for in recent years. The activists, of course, falsely claim that “parental rights” don’t exist, and that parental access to information (whether medical- or school-related) jeopardizes the safety of LGBT youth.

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These activists often win: look at any province where schools are permitted to socially transition kids at school without parental knowledge or consent. Of course people had their hackles up over the situation in Newfoundland: it looked like yet another inappropriate attack on parents to appease a small movement that puts children on the path towards irreversible, cross-sex medical alterations. Perhaps it was; it’s still not clear why the policy came to be, and why no one in the Progressive Conservative government moved to get rid of it until now.